There were three very important home computers that came out in 1977, the Commodore PET, the Apple II and the Radio Shack TRS-80 Computers. We retroactively call the Radio Shack the TRS-80 Model 1 but that is not how it was advertised at the time. Also, the use of the term trinity to describe these three computers is something that appears to have begun in the mid 90s.
One of my goals in the Retro Computing hobby is to own all three of the original premade personal computers that didn't have to be built from kits like the Altair 8800. So far I have been able to acquire; an Apple II Plus from 1979, a Commodore PET 4016 from 1980, and an original TRS-80 Model 1 computer.
Recently on a trip to Free Geek Twin Cities I was able to acquire another Apple II Plus machine and this turned out to be a machine from 1979. This got me thinking again about wanting to get as close as possible to an original Apple II experience from 1977 and so I started doing research. Tech Time Traveller has a really helpful video on this topic here. He also painnstakingly built up this list of machines have have sold on eBay, since eBay doesn't keep pricing information and old listings around on their site very long Thanks Tech Time Traveller! Now that I know an original Apple II from eBay is probably more than I want to spend right now, what are my options?
Going back to the machine from Free Geek, I learned that the board in my "newest" Apple II Plus is a "Revision 4" logic board. This is from the period in 1979 was when Apple was making both the II and the II Plus at the same time, and often with the same logic board and only different ROMs and different RAM amounts.
At the same time as this was going on a listing came up on eBay for a computer that was listed as an original Apple II machine, but after inspecting it it seems likely that this machine had been upgraded to II Plus, which I later confirmed was the consensus in one of the Apple II Facebook groups. I'm still considering the option of building an "Original Apple II" by getting bits and pieces and putting them together, but I think I'd rather hold out and wait till one comes along that is more complete locally, or with a backstory that I can learn about.
In the meantime, I learned about the Apple II ROM card, which was a period correct accessory card from 1979 that folks bought when they were upgrading their Apple IIs to Apple II Plus which allowed them to put the old ROMs onto an expansion board and switch them in at will from a switch on the back of the computer. I used to have a modern card that did this, but ironically that card failed, so I set out to find a vintage card that still had the correct ROMs on it (Many, perhaps most of the ones on eBay have been stripped). This article on the VCFed forums explains which ROMs where the period correct ones for an original Apple II (With Woz's Integer basic, and without Applesoft Basic). I was able to find and acquire one of these period correct cards with the full ROM set, and it works great...
So, as of this writing, my Apple II Plus behaves in exactly the same way as the original machine, so I am now able to explore software from that era. A good win for a reasonable price with parts that are still relatively inexpensive.
